Author: Laura Counts

More than 200 Berkeley MBA students competed at the annual Challenge 4 Charity (C4C) Weekend at Stanford University April 13 and 14, demonstrating physical and mental agility while raising funds for Special Olympics.

C4C Weekend brings together MBA students from nine West Coast business schools to compete in endeavors from squash to spelling bees and from basketball to a battle of the bands. The event raises funds for Boys and Girls Clubs, the Special Olympics, and family-related charities local to each school.

Each school also gets the chance to showcase particular strengths, which turned out to be dodgeball and the 5K run for Berkeley-Haas. In a seven-game series, the Blue and Gold’s precise aim with a playground ball knocked the competition down one by one, until only the UCLA Bruins stood between Haas and the title—obtained in a nail-biter of a Game 7. In the fleet-to-foot category, Chris Chavez, MBA 13, had time to nibble on what remained of his fingernails after dodgeball, as he crossed the 5K finish line two minutes ahead of the second-place runner.

Berkeley MBA students this year raised $42,000 and worked more than 1,300 volunteer hours for the Alameda Point Collaborative (APC), a nonprofit dedicated to helping the homeless. On May 20, APC will honor Haas with its Educational Partner Award for the students’ strong fundraising and volunteer support.

 “C4C embodies the Haas principle of Beyond Yourself and makes an incredibly close Haas community feel even closer,” says C4C’s Sports Weekend VP Gabe Gil, MBA 13. “We are continuously inspired by those we are helping.”

Together the nine C4C schools have raised $5.8 million for the Special Olympics and contributed 18,000 hours of volunteer service to the organization and other charities since 1996. 

For more information on how to become involved with Challenge 4 Charity, contact [email protected].

A team of business and engineering undergraduates who proposed a platform strategy for eReaders won the Haas School's 13th annual E-Business Case Competition on Thursday, April 12.

The winning team consisted of Haas students Ryan Liu and Lawrence Liu, both BS  13, and engineering students Prashanth Vijay, BS 13 (Mechanical), and Sumer Joshi, BS 13 (Electrical). Each team in the E-Business Case Competition is required to include a least one Haas student and one non-Haas student.

About 70 classmates and friends gathered to support the three competition final teams, who delivered a fifteen-minute presentation and then fielded questions from four judges.

In this year’s competition, teams were challenged to evaluate the eReader industry and identify investment opportunities. Twenty-five teams submitted complete cases. Of the three finalists, each identified a class of industry “intermediaries,” including software developers and service providers, as best poised to succeed. However, each had a slightly different take.

The winning team recommended that venture capitalists invest in platform providers─such as Next Issue, Apple, and Adobe─who dictate the user experience on such devices as the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes & Noble Nook. "Next-generation eBook platform providers should push additional content, features, and applications to existing and new readers," the team wrote in its PowerPoint presentation. The team determined that platform providers offer the least risk and highest growth potential, and cited an eBook subscription service as one new idea to be explored.

“We were focused on a really specific strategy,” says Liu. He added that the eReader study provided a valuable opportunity to apply business concepts learned at Haas. “It’s one thing to learn in class, but it’s very different to have a real-world application.”

The E-Business Case Competition is sponsored by the Haas Undergraduate Program, the Schlinger Family Foundation, Cisco Systems, and Deloitte Consulting.

Read more about the competition on the Haas Undergraduate Student Blog.

Students from UC Berkeley's largest investment club, including two Haas undergraduates, took first place Saturday in the Georgetown Stock Pitch Conference.

The Berkeley team consisted of Haas students Anthony D'Asaro, BS 13, and Kevin Hsu, BS 14; and two economics students, George Eliades, BA 13, and Max Oltersdorf, BA 14.

Hsu attributed the students' success to their involvement in the Berkeley Investment Group (BIG), the largest investment club at UC Berkeley, with more than 400 members, 21 officers, and a portfolio of more than $30,000 real investments. The club's activities include hosting weekly educational meetings, managing a real mutual fund, and consulting for investment managers.

In the first round, the Berkeley team defeated USC and Michigan with its 10-minute pitch for Diamond Foods, followed by 10-minutes of Q&A with a panel of judges. In the final round, the Berkeley team defeated William & Mary, George Mason, and Georgetown to take home the $2,000 first place prize. The competition also featured teams from Stanford, Wharton, the Ross School at the University of Michigan, and the Stern School at NYU.

“Our investment thesis for Diamond is simple," D'Asaro said of the BIG team's pitch. "We believe the company consists of several strong brands, but recent pessimism around the stock has pushed the stock price well below the company’s fundamental value. We believe that Diamond will realize its full value once the earnings are restated and once fear is dispelled."

Berkeley Investment Group Winners George Eliades, BA 13; Kevin Hsu, BS 14; Max Oltersdorf, BA 14; and Anthony D'Asaro, BS 13.

Building sustainably engineered houses in Bangladesh. Fighting malnutrition in Burkina Faso with local collection and distribution of high-protein caterpillars—a staple of the local diet. Lowering diabetes among pregnant women in Mexico through monitoring tools, text messaging, and peer-to-peer education.

Those are a sampling of homegrown ideas from some of the world’s brightest and most passionate business students competing in the final round of the 2012 Global Social Venture Competition, to be held at UC Berkeley on April 20.

The competition, which was started by Berkeley MBA students in 1999 and expands to new parts of the globe each year, attracted more than 600 entries from a record 50 countries. Entries this year proposed social ventures to combat hunger, environmental degradation, disease, and resource scarcity.

As part of the competition leadership team, Tarek Hosny, MBA 12, built new partnerships with business schools in Kenya, South Africa, and Turkey, adding to a growing list of partners in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. He said the goal is to add a partner in Latin America next year.

“Since I began working on this in 2010, interest in social entrepreneurship has been growing and growing,” says Hosny, who stepped down from his leadership role this year to enter the competition with a plan for rooftop micro-farms in Egypt.

“This competition has become a truly global network,” adds Adjunct Professor Jennifer Walske, director of social entrepreneurship at the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and faculty director for the competition.

Walske said entries showed a wide range of creative ideas from both the developing world and developed world. “People are finding there are a variety of ways to address social problems, and one of the ways is to build businesses that address the bottom of the pyramid.”

Two Haas-connected teams are among the 15 finalists competing for the top $50,000 prize at the April 20 global finals and conference. The GSVC Ideas to Impact Conference and finals will include a keynote speech by social entrepreneurship author Rupert Scofield, CEO of FINCA International, and presentations from all eight finalist teams. The event will culminate with an awards dinner and keynote address by Ira Magaziner, former Clinton administration adviser and CEO of the Clinton Health Access Initiative.

Among Haas teams, 2Vidas, the company with a multi-pronged approach to help Mexican woman control glucose levels, consists of Rachel Sherman and Jenny Chang, MBA 12; Emily Ewell MBA/MPH 12; and Tara English MBA 13. Watsi, a peer-to-peer fundraising platform that enables donors to fund medical treatments for individuals in developing countries, includes Katie Dewitt MBA 13.

Teams will be judged on financial sustainability, likelihood of implementation, and social impact, and will win exposure and mentorship opportunities in addition to cash awards. Nearly one-quarter of past entrants have become viable businesses, including Revolution Foods, World of Good, Kiva, and IndieGogo.

For more information and to register for the April 20 conference and awards dinner, visit www.gsvc.org.

The Haas School's Center for Responsible Business (CRB) has awarded a $20,000 scholarship to Kyle Rudzinski, MBA 14, to support his focus on sustainable growth in the solar industry.

CRB awards the scholarship─$10,000 per year for two years─to a first-year Berkeley MBA student with a commitment to changing the world through business. The scholarship was established by Haas alumni to give students the opportunity to use their time at Haas to explore the leading edge of corporate responsibility and sustainability and grow a network of graduates leading the movement to integrate these ideas into their work.

As the Haas Center for Responsible Business alumni scholar, Rudzinski plans to delve into the intersection of clean technology and sustainability throughout the solar energy supply chain. He seeks to integrate responsible material use and product recycling with sustainable growth in the solar industry, which builds on his experience in solar policy at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

During his time with DOE, Rudzinski co-managed selection of $20 million of investments in innovative solar startups and managed $4 million of IT awards and solar finance research. Before that, Rudzinski served two years in an executive communications role for the U.S. undersecretary for energy and the assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy. He also has volunteered on energy projects in Peru.

Matteo Maggiori, PhD 12, has been chosen to participate in the prestigious Review of Economics Studies May Meetings, the first time a Haas student has ever received this honor.

This “award” is given annually to the nation’s seven most promising graduating doctoral students in economics and finance in the world, who tour several European universities to present their research. In addition to Maggiori, this year’s participants represent MIT (three students), Yale, Stanford, and NYU. During two weeks in May, the group will speak at the University of Mannheim in Mannheim, Germany; the University of Leicester in Leicester, England; and Igier-Bocconi University in Milan, Italy.

The job market paper that Maggiori will present during the tour provides a framework for understanding the global financial architecture as an equilibrium of risk-sharing between countries with different levels of financial development. In the paper, he explains how this asymmetrical risk sharing has real consequences both in good times and during global crises.

In a second paper, Maggiori provides evidence of the role of the U.S. dollar as a global safe asset. He shows that the U.S. dollar earns a safety premium versus a basket of foreign currencies and that this premium is particularly high in times of global financial stress. These findings support the view that the dollar acts as the reserve currency for the international monetary system.

Although a number of Haas faculty members have been invited on the May Meetings tour in the past, having Maggiori chosen is a great honor, says Associate Dean and Professor Andy Rose. “It’s a recognition that we’re producing first-rate graduate students,” he says.

For Maggiori, it’s an excellent launch for his academic career. The list of past participants includes some of the most distinguished young economists,; many of whom went on to make significant contributions to the field. “It’s a great honor," Maggiori says.

Maggiori has been appointed Assistant Professor of finance at the Stern School of Business at New York University starting July 1 and will also hold a joint appointment in NYU’s Department of Economics. During the academic year 2012-13, he will be on leave to be a fellow at the International Economics Section of the Department of Economics at Princeton University.

A pair of Haas MBA students won the first round of a prestigious national contest sponsored by Wal-Mart with a proposal to deliver healthy lunches to suburban office parks and companies in rural settings.

Minnie Fong and Jane Wong, both MBA 13, were selected from three Berkeley-Haas teams go on to the next stage of the Wal-Mart Better Business Plan Challenge, which will pit them against regional teams in late February at the University of California, Davis. The winners of the regional competition then will fly to Wal-Mart's Arkansas headquarters to compete before company executives in April. The grand prize winners will take home $20,000 to invest in their idea.

“We’re very excited,” Wong says. “This validation comes just at the right time. It gives our project momentum. Our idea is very important to us.”

Fong and Wong are hoping to best the other teams with “Fresh Picks,” a business that would deliver healthy, affordable lunches to offices, even in non-urban settings, at reduced prices after receiving subsidies from employees’ companies. 

Fong actually tested a mini-version of the business at home in the Philippines. Her office mates were always jealous of her homemade lunches that she brought to work, and in short order, she was bringing (and selling) lunches for up to 20 co-workers at a time. “It was a lot of fun,” she says. “I realized I had this passion. And I saw the potential market for this.” 

So, when the Wal-Mart contest came up, she connected with Wong over their lamentations about dismal cafeteria food, and the team was formed.

In 2009, Haas undergraduates Alejandro Velez and Nikhil Arora won the regional competition and now run a company called BTTR (Back to the Roots) Ventures, which takes used coffee grounds to create grow-it-at-home mushroom kits. “They’re one of our success stories,” says Will Morrison, program manager at the Haas Center for Responsible Business, who hopes for a similar fate for Fresh Picks.